Wednesday 21 November 2012

Galileo Galilei, Pisa, 15 February 1564 – Arcetri, 8 January 1642

The Guardian and its readership are scary.  In a discussion of the Church of England's refusal to make women bishops we read:

"Galileo was around 2000 years ago."

This is not a figure of speech to reinforce an idea of being out of date.  The reader appears to carry this notion as knowledge and  part of argument.

7 comments:

Elby the Beserk said...

Beyond scary. I wish I had kept the details, but a while back on someone's blog, I saw the following statement

"The truth, for the Left, is whatever they want it to be".

I'd add Warmer Climate Scientists to that as well. Obama thinks that we are still warming thanks to them, even though the graph is going down. Mr. Obama is, we are told, a very smart man. I'd contest that.

lilith said...

Galileo is always good to bring up when being told "the science is settled, there is a consensus of scientists..."

hatfield girl said...

I've been conscientiously reading the Guardian this month in case a steady belief that it was ill-informed and propagandistic might be ill-founded.

What has struck me most has been the hate. And the ignorance. What is the matter with them?

Caronte said...

Perhaps it is just the Grauniad tradition.

Jeff Wood said...

A couple of lifetimes ago, I used to read a newspaper called the Manchester Guardian.

I would probably disagree with much of it now, but it remained the home of classical liberalism, leavened with social responsibility.

Then the paper moved to London, having already renamed itself the Guardian, if I remember rightly.

From that point it devolved into the dishonest, statist, Left rag it is today.

Yes, in the Left there is a lot of hate, and ignorance. If you think you are Left, and don't possess those qualities, you are not a leftist. When I realised that for myself, I binned the paper.

dearieme said...

We stopped taking it on the rather superstitious grounds that its insanity might be catching.

Elby the Beserk said...

HG. Yes - the levels of hatred on show in the Guardian is appalling. The levels of prejudice and bigotry as well, which given the Guardian's stance on these things, is even worse.

Jeff.

Yes - I was brought up on the Manchester Guardian, and learnt many words scanning the back of it whilst my father read it at breakfast. It was indeed the paper of classic Liberalism - and indeed, the North West, where I was brought up, was a small Liberal enclave way back when. My parents were Liberal voters.

The Guardian, as it is now, is another matter altogether, and Rusbridger has really taken the paper down into the pits.